A veneer stacker is well known which carries a veneer sheet, to a position in which to release the sheet, while holding substantially one entire end portion thereof and supporting opposed side portions thereof. Also, apparatus for stacking veneer sheets conveyed from two different directions, alternately or in a predetermined order, have been proposed by the applicant in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. 56-133104 and Japanese Patent Application No. 61-310191.
In the foregoing veneer stacker, when the sheet is carried, its front portion is kept substantially flat, but its rearward portion is downwardly curved. The sheet is released in such a state and is dropped. Since the curved portion of the sheet meets with a smaller air resistance than the front portion thereof, the curved portion drops earlier than the front portion and, hence, the entire sheet makes a landing not in the position directly below the position from which to the sheet has started to be dropped, but in a more advanced position in the direction in which the sheet has been carried. This tendency is pronounced in the case of veneer sheets with small thicknesses, for example, thicknesses of some 0.6 millimeters. Therefore it has been very difficult to stack such veneer sheets with strict accuracy. Hence, for example, where an adhesive material is applied to veneer sheets and then the sheets are stacked by using the foregoing conventional veneer stacker, veneer sheets larger than necessary are used in anticipation of an inexact stacking. Such a practice reduces the yield of the sheets.